We checked in the morning how the competing snow-sculpture-groups were progressing. One day sure makes a difference. They are supposed to be finished on Saturday and most teams are starting to create the details of their work. We're curious who will win.

We walked to the station in heavy snowfall and took the train to Otaru, a small city some 30 km away which has its own snow festival.

The festival is completely different in setup though. No advertisements anywhere and everything is done by amateur volunteers. We encountered the first of them when we followed the abandoned train track which was covered in snow on both sides making a nice and narrow trail. Many volunteers were working hard to be ready for the illumination that evening, using simple tools like buckets and various shapes such as hearts, stars and cylinders. Besides Japanese there were also 'teams' of Korean and Chinese teenagers. Some had come to Otaru just for this volunteer event and had never before seen so much snow, nor had any clue on what to create when they arrived.

We promised to come back in the evening and walked on to the shopping street with nice old, somewhat colonial-style buildings. Apparently there are many glass blowers and music box creators in Otaru since we saw many shops with just that. The road was slippery though since Dennis nearly crushed the music boxes we just bought when he fell.

We stopped for some coffee, tea and a small bite and then found out that most shops closed at six. So much for shopping. Next stop was the canal where it was much more crowded. Quite logical since the city had been advertising this canal everywhere. We already noticed during the day that an awful lot of Chinese were visiting Otaru. No clue where they came from or why, but they came by the busloads. Quietly taking the time for a photo with the big tripod was therefore out of the question, since Chinese are much more ... outgoing ... than Japanese. The illuminated decorations were surprisingly similar to the ones we saw done by the volunteers before, just more crowded and for a much shorter path.

Arriving at the train tracks again, it was immediately clear that there were almost no foreigners here, had a more spacious area, more decorations and with a much friendlier atmosphere. In this area we had some nice chats with the volunteers, took our time with the tripod and had much nicer views to photograph. It seemed strange that the canal part was so much more promoted for a 'lesser' experience, but we didn't mind. We bought an ungappa (unga no kappa, friendly canal river demon) as souvenir.